Sep 24, 2014Miami International Airport has installed hundreds of Bluetooth beacons across its facilities, from check-in gates to valet parking zones. The battery-powered devices, supplied by BluVision (formerly StickNFind) and deployed with assistance from SITA Lab, the research and development arm of air transport IT company SITA, are ready to be used in any number of applications supporting airport operations, passenger services and retail promotions. The project could make Miami International Airport—which services nearly 40 million passengers annually and is the 12th busiest airport in the United States—a test bed for beacon-based business applications. The goal is to use the beacons to enable a variety of applications that passengers could access via their smartphones and tablets, including such applications as way-finding to locate an updated flight gate, or providing special promotional offers to nearby concessionaires, based on a passenger's location.
The beacons, which transmit a unique ID number to smartphones and other mobile devices via the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol, are registered in the SITA Common-Use Beacon Registry. In June 2014, SITA Lab announced that it had launched the registry as a central data hub for beacons deployed within airports. The registry is designed to make beacon networks easy for airports and application developers to deploy and manage (see RFID News Roundup: SITA Researches Beacon Use at Airports, Plans to Establish Beacon Registry).
To create an application, a developer must know the ID and precise location of each installed beacon inside an airport. For an airport-specific application, the developer might be able to obtain that information directly from the airport's IT department, but for an airline to develop a system-wide application—such as one that, say, triggers a passenger's boarding pass to appear on her phone as she approaches a security gate—it requires fast access to accurate beacon information across all airports that airline uses.
Maurice Jenkins, Miami International Airport's division director of information systems, says his airport hopes airlines and other partners will leverage the beacons to test new ways of digitally interacting with passengers, and of making the travel experience more convenient.
Jim Peters, SITA's chief technology officer, praises the airport's effort in putting the common registry to use, and for being willing to collaborate with stakeholders who use the facility to test a range of applications.
Leveraging the registry is easy, Peters says. Any developer can create an account and request a key to access an application programming interface (API) that lets an application pull any beacon identifier and location data from the registry, for use in an application. A second API grants access to the metadata related to each registered beacon. Metadata for a beacon deployed within an airport is related to that beacon's use cases, such as an airline using it for passenger communication or a concessionaire offering promotions to passengers based on their location within the airport. Examples of metadata related to a beacon near a boarding gate is a flight number or flight delay information, whereas a beacon in a security zone might reference the current wait time for travelers to pass through security.
SITA Lab is still testing and evaluating the registry, Peters notes, but so far, the results are positive. "We'll likely go forward with it and productize it," he states. SITA already provides infrastructure for airport systems (such as ticketing kiosks and baggage handling), he adds, so managing information systems used for beacons falls in line with its existing offerings.
To date, the registry contains beacons that have been installed at four airports in addition to Miami International Airport. One of these is Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, where American Airlines launched a beacon trail earlier this year to test means of enhancing its existing passenger-facing mobile phone applications, including way-finding tools that direct passengers to their gates based on beacon signals.
According to Peters, the remaining three locations have not yet been announced. In the past, SITA has been involved in beacon pilots at San Francisco International Airport, London Heathrow Airport, Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport and Copenhagen Airport.
SITA will work with airports to ensure that beacons are registered properly, and that they do not become so numerous as to pose possible interference issues with an airport's other wireless systems.
"Putting up RF-emitting devices [in an airport] is prohibited without the permission of the airport," Peters explains. "You can't go in and put a Wi-Fi system in without permission. If every airline and retailer in an airport did that, you would have problems, and airports won't want that done with beacons, either."
Potential for Operational Benefits
Jimmy Buchheim, the chief executive officer of BluVision—which also supplied the approximately 35 Bluetooth beacons being used for the American Airlines trial in Dallas—says his company is working in tandem with SITA Lab to evaluate a system for monitoring zones of beacons in the cloud.
At Miami International Airport, Buchheim says, BluVision has installed its BluFi device, which plugs into an AC wall outlet. The BluFi device contains Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios, enabling it to act as a bridge between deployed beacons and the cloud.
These devices, Buchheim says, will make it easy for airports to monitor large numbers of beacons. What's more, he adds, BluVision has deployed some of its iBEEK beacons, which contain integrated temperature sensors, at Miami International Airport, and is currently evaluating how the airport might leverage the sensor data transmitted by these beacons and sent to the cloud via BluFi devices, in order to better control temperate settings inside the terminals. If the sensors show that a gate area is much cooler than the minimum standard—say, the zone is set for 68 degrees but the sensors show its actual temperature is 64 degrees—then the airport can adjust the temperature, both for energy savings and for passenger comfort.
The iBEEK beacon includes a light sensor, which the Miami airport or any other user could leverage to set lighting levels throughout the facility, based on its real-time needs. It is also available with such options as a capacitive touch sensor, a three-axis accelerometer and a magnetometer.
"We've found that you can send much more additional information via Bluetooth than just a unique identifier," Peters states. "Whether that is about temperature, motion, light or vibrations, it could be very useful for the airport, because it's possible to use for environmental control. It's an interesting angle on [the] Internet of Things, in terms of the infrastructure. It can be used not just for managing HVAC [heating, ventilating and air conditioning], but also to know if an escalator has stopped running—or if, based on vibration monitoring, it might break soon."
